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Facebook Pages: Asking Questions Doesn’t Increase Interaction Rate

author: Kyle date: July 20, 2011

At recent conferences, the buzz has been that asking questions and being conversational improves your Facebook pages’ comments and likes, or, interaction rate. We define the interaction rate as the sum of the  number of likes and comments for a post divided by the number of page likes, at the time of publishing.

In this post we will analyze whether questions improve the interaction rate. We looked at 10,000+ status message posts. We divided them into those that contained the question mark (2,608), and those without (8,329). This is our first finding:

Question posts get 23% lower than a non-question posts. >tweet this<

We were surprised to see that asking users questions doesn’t actually get a higher interaction rate. So, we examined this further, by separating out the call to action (CTA) posts- those posts with “Like” and “Comment” in them. We thought perhaps CTA posts were lifting the rate of the non-question posts.

In the graph above, the non-question interaction rate is still higher than the question rate, despite splitting out the CTA posts.

For our next analysis, instead of comparing the posts against interaction rate, we chose the Like Rate. Perhaps question posts are improving the like rate? If we tease apart the interaction rate, will we find any surprises? The like rate is the number of likes the post got, over page likes. These are the results:


Obviously, the like rate is the highest when asking users to “like”.  For the other categories, questions are still in the bottom rates.

Our last analysis looks at the comment rate, which is the number of post comments, per post, over page likes. This is where we found some interesting data.

Again, somewhat logically, the comment rate is up when asking users to comment.  Finally, though, the question catagory inched up past the non-question rate.

In conclusion:
Facebook page admins looking to get the highest comment rate should be directly asking for comments from users. But, asking questions also helps. >tweet this<

*This article is part of our Engagement & Interaction white paper. (Download below, it’s free!)

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cateogories: Analysis, Blog, data, Facebook, marketing

  • http://www.facebook.com/kennadreau Ken Nadreau

    I’m not sure this is an either/or issue. I would imagine intelligent questions might get better responses than dumb ones, and there are ways of soliciting comments that are too blatant to merit activity. 

    So there are a number of factors this study doesn’t address IMHO

  • http://www.facebook.com/kennadreau Ken Nadreau

    I’m not sure this is an either/or issue. I would imagine intelligent questions might get better responses than dumb ones, and there are ways of soliciting comments that are too blatant to merit activity. 

    So there are a number of factors this study doesn’t address IMHO

  • http://www.facebook.com/SugarJones Cinthya Jones

    I had an interesting experience this week with this very thing. I posed a question as a poll one day. Six people responded. I posed it again as a status update. The conversation went on all day with people jumping in to opine until midnight. I think I’ll still use polls, just to switch things up a bit, but not so sure there will be an increase in communication with a click and no interaction.

  • http://www.facebook.com/SugarJones Cinthya Jones

    I had an interesting experience this week with this very thing. I posed a question as a poll one day. Six people responded. I posed it again as a status update. The conversation went on all day with people jumping in to opine until midnight. I think I’ll still use polls, just to switch things up a bit, but not so sure there will be an increase in communication with a click and no interaction.

  • http://twitter.com/CAAdvertising C.A Advert Solutions

    Ken-I agree. I think there’s too much variety in the types of questions/polls/CTA’s and the types of Pages and companies out there for it to be definitive either way. Glad to see a different perspective on this though, I must say! Thanks for the article-

    -Lacey, Social Media Manager with C.A Advertising Solutions

  • http://twitter.com/CAAdvertising C.A Advert Solutions

    Ken-I agree. I think there’s too much variety in the types of questions/polls/CTA’s and the types of Pages and companies out there for it to be definitive either way. Glad to see a different perspective on this though, I must say! Thanks for the article-

    -Lacey, Social Media Manager with C.A Advertising Solutions

  • http://twitter.com/PublicityHound Joan Stewart

    I’m guessing that one of the reasons questions don’t result in a high rate of interaction is because many of the questions—at least the ones I’ve seen—are so boring!   

  • http://twitter.com/PublicityHound Joan Stewart

    I’m guessing that one of the reasons questions don’t result in a high rate of interaction is because many of the questions—at least the ones I’ve seen—are so boring!   

  • http://soulati.com/blog Soulati

    I think it also varies by audience, too. If it’s a personal page where you know your community and vice versa, people will respond to a question. If it’s a company page and you’re trying to earn engagement, then the questions often go on deaf ears. I’ve had better luck managing company pages using links to pertinent studies or industry news than I have with question posts.

  • http://soulati.com/blog Soulati

    I think it also varies by audience, too. If it’s a personal page where you know your community and vice versa, people will respond to a question. If it’s a company page and you’re trying to earn engagement, then the questions often go on deaf ears. I’ve had better luck managing company pages using links to pertinent studies or industry news than I have with question posts.

  • http://twitter.com/MemphisMarly Marly

    This was a little unclear… I saw the headline and thought you meant Facebook Question (i.e. polls). Those seem to increase interaction rates for me, so I was surprised.

  • http://twitter.com/MemphisMarly Marly

    This was a little unclear… I saw the headline and thought you meant Facebook Question (i.e. polls). Those seem to increase interaction rates for me, so I was surprised.

  • http://twitter.com/MemphisMarly Marly

    Perhaps, but that’s a bit difficult to quantify for stats. What do you mean by intelligent? Polysyllabic? Relevant to the audience?

  • http://twitter.com/MemphisMarly Marly

    Perhaps, but that’s a bit difficult to quantify for stats. What do you mean by intelligent? Polysyllabic? Relevant to the audience?

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